Madeleine’s backstory, culminating with her fateful meeting with Adam, concludes in Doll Parts: A Lovesick Tale #4 written, illustrated and lettered by Luana Vecchio. This issue, like every issue before, is disturbing and poignant. Yes, those are two very conflicting emotions that you may think don’t gel, like trying to push magnets of opposite polarities together, but it’s been done before – Stephen King’s Carrie, for example.
Carrie was a piercing scream into the void, every moment of her harsh life (the bullies, her mother, etc.) dialed up to 10 and ending in a Grand Guignol of rage, blood and fire. In comparison, Madeleine’s life is quieter but her bullies are far worse because they want to do far more to her than just humiliate her at a prom, they want to destroy her innocence and her body through sexual violence. And the most disturbing thing is that Madeleine would welcome it, overcome by the relentless languor of life.
Vecchio never holds back on showing the stark beauty and terrifying savagery of this world. Beautiful women walk through picture-perfect suburbs, but behind closed doors there’s cannibalism, torture and gore and we see every gruesome detail of it.
This issue shows Madeleine in full self-destruct mode, as she plumbs the depths of the dark web, finding sites glorifying violence and cannibalism and feeding her desire to have a violent end. As days and weeks go by, Madeleine becomes more obsessed with formulating her death.
There’s a certain triumph here though, because she still demands control of every self-harm scenario. She recognizes the power she has over the many weak-willed people (primarily men) around her, men who toss hundreds of dollars at her online for a simple pic of her thigh, or the pervy school janitor who pays her too much attention in the school halls. She’s not afraid to fight for her life or death. It all has to be on her terms.
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And that’s what’s so touching about the book and Madeleine herself. In a total disaster of a world, where her mother treats her less like a daughter and more like an alien who invaded her life, and where the males around Madeleine see sexual assault as “showing her a good time”, Madeleine has a granite-like integrity, living every aspect of her life exactly as she wants and never letting the idiots and perverts drag her down.
Ultimately, she’s her own worst enemy, far more brutal to herself than anyone else could ever be, and you start to see a lot of yourself in her, because haven’t we all hated and abused ourselves at some point in our lives? If you want to read something that transcends the usual horror fare, that hits you like a battering ram to the stomach and heart, pick up this series and dive into Madeleine’s cruel beautiful world.
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